Sign2Word APP
The Sign2Word AI app aims to help young deaf learners improve their literacy skills and have a better experience in education. The user can sign a word and the app will translate it into written English.
Product
The Sign2Word AI app helps young Deaf learners improve their literacy skills and have a better experience in education. The user can sign a word and the app will translate it into written English.
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It provides young deaf learners with a personalised sign dictionary of words, relevant to the user's educational and everyday life.
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The Sign2Word AI app also helps educators and Communication Support Workers (signers) to plan more effective learning for Deaf learners by providing a 'quickscan' QR Code feature that pushes lists of keywords directly to the learner's phone, allowing them to refer to words in both sign and written English during lessons.
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In-app learning packages give younger users a fun way to learn new words at home by playing games and scoring points.
TRANSLATE
CREATE LIST OF WORDS
PERSONAL DICTIONARY
SHARE WORDS
PLAY
ADD IMAGES
Meet The Team
OUR STORY
We are all members of the Young Coders Meet-up which is a youth -led community with an ethos of diversity, inclusion and knowledge sharing. During the lockdown we have all experienced difficult times but planning our virtual meet-ups on Zoom, twice a week, has helped us to stay focussed and connected socially despite the lockdown.
IMRAN
Imran is our product client. He worked with Femi at the ideation stage to create a brief for the sign2word app, from his experience of being a Deaf learner at college. Here is how he got into coding:
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My name is Imran and I have been part of the Young Coders MeetUp since it was first launched. It’s an amazing place to learn to code, in an inclusive and friendly community. I really enjoy gaming, maths, Graphic Design and Photography but learning to code has enabled me to put those things together to create some amazing creative digital work. I am deaf and it’s been really great to be part of a wider team of young people from a diversity of places and sharing a passion for tech, coding and, especially, Machine Learning. I am presently learning to code in python, developing my own games and I’m proud to be part of a team to develop a Sign2Word App that will help the learners with their literacy.
I have delivered talks and attended conferences in the Tech industry and I’m now focused on getting our Sign2Word App to market so that others can benefit from what we develop. Every time I take part in projects and activities with the Young Coders MeetUp, I always learn so many new things. Sometimes we have to create new sign words for them because they don’t exist already. I hope to be a good role model and encourage other young deaf people to join the group and learn to code with the YCM.
FEMI
Femi is our Back-End Developer & Team Leader. He has liaised with the user community, developed a Machine Learning model ‘proof of concept’ and is managing GitHub repos. Here is how he got into coding:
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My name is Femi. I started coding when I was 8 and since then I've run coding workshops to hundreds of young people across the UK and globally. In February 2018 I was part the Young Coders Conference and together with some other young coders have founded the YCM. The YCM is an awesome place for young people to meet up collaborate and develop 21st century skills. The wide variety of topics covered means we get a taste of all aspects of coding, from web design to AR and VR. I love coding as it is really cool when you can make something that helps lots of people so easily. One awesome thing about the YCM is that it is youth-led meaning that we get to choose what we want to learn about. Also the diversity, inclusion and gender parity is amazing and really adds to the diverse young coders community.
MUTSA
Musta is our Front-End Developer & UX/UI Designer. She has created wireframes, using accessibility principles and is developing the React elements of the capture feature for our Machine Learning model. Here is her story about how she got into coding:
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My name is Mutsa and I am part of the Young Coders MeetUp. YCM is a place for anyone who is part of it, to learn, collaborate and grow. However, it provides something unique to each person. For me, Young Coders MeetUp has allowed my to find a new love for computing and a different perspective on the subject itself. Due to a different style of teaching in school, I viewed computing as a restricted subject where you really just had to follow a straight road, with maybe with a few bumps along the way. And I view myself as someone who just loves making something my own way and just being creative, so as a result I didn’t enjoy computing very much. So when it came to choosing my GCSE options, computing was surprisingly out of the running. However due to YCM, I have gotten a completely different perspective. Each week I learn something I had never known before from each mentor that comes in to give us a session. I have learnt that you can do a lot with coding and be as creative as you like using many different platforms. After each session I enjoy coming home and experimenting with the new skills I have learnt. YCM has made me really enjoy coding. In the future, I hope that many more kids will get to have an experience like YCM and way more people learn to code. A growing number of things in the world are becoming digitalised and will need people to create and code them. YCM puts you one step closer to becoming that person.
MALAIKA
Malaika is React Integration & Website Designer. She has created the website, conducted market research and worked on Al model integration into a Reach App build. Here is a short paragraph about how she got in to coding.
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Hi, my name is Malaika. I started coding when I was about 7, both at home with help from my dad (who is a professional coder) and at school. However, I was still interested in other aspects outside of what I was learning, and very curious about how things worked, and how they had been coded. I was then invited to the Young Coders Meetup, and was really interested in all the different subjects we covered, from Scratch to Micro:Bit to Artificial Intelligence. I could then combine all I had learnt into fun and interesting projects, such as the racing game with lights I created. At first I was just coding for fun and for my benefit, but then I got to the the point where I was better than many others in my class. I found that I could come to school after a Sunday of YCM and help people in my class who found coding more difficult. I then had a new reason to code - not just for fun, but also to help others. Now, I want to take my coding beyond school and help communities which don’t have the same resources to learn how to code, or to aid a global problem such as global warming. Overall, I greatly enjoy coming here, both to learn new things myself and to help others learn.
NISHKA
Nishka has done Financials, Documentation and building of the React App. She has produced journey/marketing planning and financials for the project and developed the React App ready for the AI model integration. Here is what she has to say about how she got into coding.
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Hi I’m Nishka. I enjoy coding as it is creative and has the power to transform the way we do things, for instance, through AI. When I was 8 we moved to the UK from India and I started learning Python at our local code club. I joined my school Robotics team as the coder – we went up to the nationals and then to the World Finals in Kentucky! Two years back I was invited to be part of the Young Coders Conference, and this opened up a whole new world for me. I met other young people like me and became part of the young coder community. I started running workshops to teach coding to other young people, especially those who aren’t lucky enough to have easy access – both in the UK and on my summer visits to India, and have so far run 40 workshops teaching around a thousand participants directly. It has taught me so much. In mid-2018 the idea of Young Coders Meet Ups was born and I took part in the development sessions. Other young people were invited and there were monthly meet-ups over the next six months. We learnt new ideas and concepts every time. Our community has grown stronger and we continue to work together, helping and supporting each other, and making a difference to the wider community.
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THOMAS
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Thomas is our Back- End Developer. He has created a prototype schema and researched and explored Machine Learning approaches for the AI build. Here is his story in how he got into coding.
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Hi, I'm Thomas R. My first experience with coding was when I was around 6 or 7 and had to use the Linux command line to get Minecraft working on the original Raspberry Pi. I did my first Linux installation when I was 7 and got into programming in Python through the Raspberry Pi and Minecraft. I started going to a Raspberry Jam where I met Femi. We set up our own Raspberry Jam with an aim to be inclusive towards people with autism and Tourettes. This slowly evolved into the Young Coders Conference where young coders from across the UK delivered coding workshops to the public in the Tate Modern. Many of the young coders from the YCC (including me) went on to start the Young Coders Meetup. We then met Imran, a deaf young coder and realised the challenges deaf young people face in their day-to-day life. Many deaf people have trouble translating their thoughts and ideas into English so we decided to use AI to make an app that translates sign language into English. Outside (sort of) of the YCM, I am also into electronics and physical computing and recently 3D printing. I have also been fascinated by the power of AI and neural networks and own so many Raspberry Pis I can now pretty much just pull one out of my drawer whenever I need one.
Ethical Principles
